A New Social Paradigm

We all know that Social Media is broken.

I’d like to propose a solution.

It’s not a simple solution, none of these things are.

It’s not profitable, at least not in the traditional sense, but that’s by design.

The back story we all know.

Where we are is that there are many social media platforms, some the result of intentional design, some the cumulative manipulations of many or few, whose express purpose is to extract value for their owners.

As with all capitalist endeavours, it’s not enough for profitability. It’s line go up, all the time. Which inevitably leads to no innovation, pure enshittifcation, and undermining of any ability for any content creators to actually make money from the platforms.

This, in turn, means they are only working for the exposure or for a convoluted and high-effort endgame of third-party advertisers, Patreon (etc.), and, of course, merch.

Companies end up squeezing their users until they simply quit.

And now, backfilling with AI slop.

In the end, the platforms will probably fail.

The content creators are struggling, suffering at the whim of lower revenues, poor discovery, and whatever insanity ‘this week’ from ‘the algorithm.’ Causing stress, burnout, and struggle.

The advertisers are getting fewer and lower quality impressions for their ads, many of which are being shown to people who don’t care. Costs keep going up, and the ROI is going down.

The content consumers desperately want good content, community, and experiences they can enjoy. As time goes on, they find themselves trying to filter out meaningless drivel, or, worse, just giving into the slop. Diversity is decreasing. Interesting content is going away. Personal connections are fading.

In the process, the only people being served are the investors - but, even then, only on the short term.

Social Media is coming to a cliff, and the only solution seems to be shingles of the old versions, like BlueSky, with the hopes of drawing in the audience away from the former powerhouse that has gone to hell.

Rarely do these platforms offer something new. Often, they offer less, simply with better manipulations. Like TikTok.

The framework for change.

I would like to propose a framework for change; one that is, perhaps, a bit naive, but I think stands to do very well. Because it’s not just different in the entire business model, but it is tailored to the needs of all parties. Even the investors, assuming the investors care at all about sustainability.

The only way social media stands to evolve with society, and not suffer the boom/bust cycles of tech is for it to be fundamentally different.

That means that creators need to be able to spend more time on creating, and less time trying to be brand managers, filters for scams, or otherwise selling their soul to whomever might want to pay for it.

It means that advertisers must be able to get higher value ad spots, better managed, and transparent.

Consumers need to be able to consume what they want to consume. Ads are a given, but should be meaningful and appropriate. The ads, themselves, shouldn’t be scams.

Algorithms need to evolve away from maximizing viewership in the most predatory way possible to something that suits the needs of creators, advertisers and consumers.

And, as mentioned, investors need to be willing to accept modest growth that is driven by innovation, quality, and value to other stakeholders.

All of that must be built on transparency. The business needs to be transparent to all. That means margins are known and understood. Methods are known and understood. And, most of all, everyone can understand how various algorithms work - how they’re weighted, what metrics they’re using, and how they can be tailored.

Complexity from Simplicity.

In general, the goal is to create a highly adaptive platform that is able to adapt to the shifting needs of its users, however defined. The core to that is a user management system that ensures that content created by a user, can be downloaded in bulk, with offline management tools. For a creator, that can be all of their statistics, videos, text. For a consumer, it can be references to all comments and interactions, subscriptions, and more. For an advertiser, it’s a breakdown of all campaigns, copy, reach, and leads.

Single point management for all of it, with the ability to be stored offline, and managed with absolute transparency. Security is built in from the start.

From that, one can build innovative delivery mechanisms. New ways to interact between each user type. New ways to create ads. Whatever. All are managed and stored in the user account that can always be offloaded by the user if they want.

Users own their data. It is not for sale, and while there may be means to sell one’s content to AI companies, it will always be opt-in.

AI content will be generally forbidden, at least within clear guidelines.

The platform concept.

Right now, there’s no longer anything particularly special about any particular social media platform. Some have distinct niches - like LinkedIn in the professional community - but that is only a function of the lack of interest of anyone else to try and enter the space.

Building a platform is non-trivial, even if you rip off a third party’s code. It takes time, expertise, and infrastructure.

The real innovation stands to be built around content control, delivery, and diversification.

Imagine, if you will, an app. The app has multiple tabs, just like any browser, across the top.

Each tab is a different style of social media; video, shorts, short form, long form, article, professional and forum. Each has its own tailored feed, that works much like sites like YouTube, Twitter, Discord.

Across the bottom, there’s another set of tabs.

Account, creator, consumer, advertiser, corporate.

The account is like every other site. The creator is where a creator uploads and manages their content. Meaningful stats, tools, management, security. The consumer is where you choose how to set up your feeds. Advertiser gives companies similar management tools. Corporate is a window into everything about the platform.

Each section is tailored to give the information that the user needs. Discovery, tracking, and algorithm information.

Granular tools where you can see how the algorithm breaks down for your needs. While impractical to describe the algorithm writ large, each user can have the ability to influence variables as they apply to their feeds in each vertical so that you, the user, can have meaningful control over what ends up in your feed.

Ownership

Ownership is usually where social media goes wrong. As previously described, investors want to milk it for everything, or it’s used for other manipulations.

In the end, I think the best scenario is much like the “corporate democracy” that I described in a previous article (link). Investors should make money. But the exit is planned; the users (consumers, advertisers, creators) are the ones buying out the stock at a controlled rate.

Or, conversely, they can hold the stock and receive predictable ROI in the form of dividends that are managed percentages from the performance of the company as a whole.

It’s not that people can’t make money, it just has to be sustainable.

Getting new users

The holy grail of any new platform is collecting users.

Typically, this is viewed as being difficult for many reasons, not the least of which is the mismatch between creators and users.

Firstly, I would argue that part of that is that creators have little reason to switch because the ROI is often tiny - unless you’re a high-profile creator being paid to lure both users and creators to a platform.

Second, when the systems are transparent, do not limit a creator from posting elsewhere, and there are clear financial gains by supporting the new platform.

Given the nature of the platform, there’s a real incentive for creators to upload existing content to the platform, and create new content for it. I would expect that this could create robust organic growth as creators draw their new audience to the new platform - because it will fans want to help creators do better.

The key is ensuring that the systems are robust and advertisers are developed so that the creators can be adequately paid for the effort. Through transparency guarantees and growth strategies are clear, my expectation is that creators would simply have no choice but gradually move to a platform that shows them respect and ownership.

Nothing is guaranteed.

But something has to change.

I would love to find people who are interested in moving this forward. What I’ve outlined here is merely a start. I have thoughts on actual structures, and how the whole thing would work, of course, but that's a discussion for another day.